A noodle cooking apparatus as disclosed in an official gazette of Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) NO. 60-172264 can be noted as a prior invention which has been invented prior to filing of the present patent application. This prior apparatus is constructed such that a block of plain noodle is produced by mixing flour with water and kneading a mixture of flour and water, it is then flattened and slit to form longitudinally extending noodles which in turn are boiled and cooked using hot water, and the cooked noodles are finally received in a receptacle so that a product of cooked foodstuff is delivered to a customer.
However, since the conventional noodle cooking apparatus is operated at every time when a foodstuff in the form of noodles is to be prepared and produced, there arises a problem that manpower is required for removing dirty dishes, bowls or the like after completion of a cooking operation.
In view of the foregoing problem, the present invention is intended to provide an automatic foodstuff cooking apparatus in the form of an automatic foodstuff cooking/vending apparatus which assures that a foodstuff can automatically be produced by a customer's purchasing operation, a customer can visually confirm a series of cooking steps, and moreover, the apparatus can be designed and constructed in smaller dimensions.
In addition, with respect to the conventional apparatus constructed in the above-described manner, noodles are received in an elongated basket of which upper surface is opened and exposed to the outside so that they are conveyed further while they are held in the basket. Thus, when the noodles are to be discharged to a subsequent cooking step during a conveying operation, the noodles in the basket can not be taken out therefrom unless the basket is reversed. For this reason, other problems are that it is difficult to mechanize a takeout operation of the noodles from the basket and the noodles in the basket can be taken out therefrom only by utilizing operator's manpower.
Therefore, the present invention is intended to provide an automatic foodstuff cooking apparatus which assures that a foodstuff received in a basket can easily be conveyed to a subsequent cooking step.
Additionally, the present invention is intended to provide an automatic foodstuff cooking apparatus which assures that a foodstuff received in a basket can easily be delivered to a receptacle, and moreover, undesirable invasion of unnecessary water drops into the receptacle can be prevented reliably.
With respect to the conventional automatic cooking/vending apparatus as described above, since boiling water in a boiling water bath is normally held in the boiling state by activating a heating unit so as to enable noodles to be boiled in the boiling water bath at all times, a quantity of vaporization of the boiling water is unavoidably increased. This leads to problems that the boiling water bath should frequently be supplemented with hot water, causing the working temperature of the boiling water in the boiling water bath to be reduced at every time of additional supplement of hot water. Since the boiling water in the boiling water bath should be maintained at the boiling temperature of hot water at all times, there arises another problem that a quantity of energy consumed by the heating unit is increased undesirably.
The present invention has been made in consideration of the foregoing background and its object resides in providing an automatic foodstuff cooking apparatus in the form of an automatic cooking/vending apparatus including a controlling unit for properly controlling a temperature of hot water for boiling a foodstuff wherein a quantity of vaporization of boiling water for boiling the foodstuff can be reduced, a quantity of consumption of the boiling water can be reduced, and moreover, a quantity of energy consumed by a heating unit can be reduced.